How to backup your Windows Phone photos on OneDrive

Smartphones today let you do a lot more than talking. In fact, with the kind of cameras that are featured in newer models, its no surprise that the picture gallery on our smartphones are packed with more images than we can possibly track. While that’s great news, smartphone’s being what they are, it is possible to lose those precious pictures just as easily. That’s why making a backup is recommended.

Backing up Windows Phone images isn’t complicated at all. It doesn’t involve pulling and tugging on a bunch of wires and hardware devices. With Microsoft’s handy cloud solution OneDrive, (previously called SkyDrive ) backing up is as effortless as tapping on a few options on your smartphone. Don’t believe me? Well, I’ll show you how you can back up your Windows Phone images on OneDrive in a few easy steps. In fact, you can use the same steps to automatically upload your video captures too!

If you own a Windows Phone, you probably have a Windows Live ID. If you don’t have a OneDrive account, you can sign up with that same ID for one. The free plan will give you about 7GB storage which should be plenty enough for backing up your photos.

Auto Uploading Your Windows Phone Images

You can set your Windows Phone to automatically upload all your image captures to OneDrive. To do this:

1. Head over to your Windows Phone Settings.

2. Scroll down and select Applications.

3. Select photos+camera.

4. Scroll down to the Auto Upload section and turn on OneDrive. You can also set options to upload good quality images, which may use your data plan, or upload the best quality images, in which case it will use Wi-Fi.

Note: This will work for your video captures as well.

And you’re done! Your images are now saved in OneDrive and should anything happen to your Windows Phone, you can at least be assured that your images are safe and sound in the cloud.

Caution: This feature will work only for lower resolution images. If you have a Nokia 1020 that capture hi-res images, they will not be automatically uploaded to OneDrive by following the steps in this tutorial.